


Fawlty Airlines: "Boston" And The Road Not Taken

by PlaidAdder



Series: Cabin Pressure Meta [2]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 05:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4595499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It seems to me as if “Boston” marks a real turning point in the show, in that it is the end of a path that “Cabin Pressure” could have gone down and then didn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fawlty Airlines: "Boston" And The Road Not Taken

I talk a lot about “Boston” over [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3941824), but a few other things occur to me today:

It seems to me as if “Boston” marks a real turning point in the show, in that it is the end of a path that “Cabin Pressure” could have gone down and then didn’t. There are some things that happen in this episode that never happen again:

* Someone’s death is played for comedy.

* The fact that each of them is responsible for killing someone does not really register emotionally with either Arthur or Martin.

* There are no long-term consequences and Leeman’s death is never referred to again, ever.

So it is my hypothesis that the question Finnemore used “Boston” to answer was: “How Fawlty is this airdot going to be?” And the answer, at least as given to us in “Douz,” is, “not all that Fawlty, and certainly not THAT bloody Fawlty ever again.”

So, if you have no idea what I mean when I talk about Fawlty Towers, [here’s a fan site you can go lose yourself in.](http://www.fawltysite.net/) It was a 1970s British sitcom starring and largely written by John Cleese of Monty Python fame. The setting was a run-down seaside hotel and the cast was the hotel’s dysfunctional staff: Basil Fawlty (Cleese) and Sybil Fawlty (Prunella Scales, who plays Martin’s mum in “Wokingham”), the owners; Polly the chambermaid (Connie Booth); and Manuel the waiter (Andrew Sachs). Basil and Sybil are married, but they hate each other; Sybil keeps Basil on a short leash and Basil is always scheming to get around and undermine her, usually to no avail. Polly, played by Cleese’s real-life wife, is Basil’s partner in crime, trying to help salvage his schemes when they inevitably go wrong. Manuel, who is famously “from Barcelona,” speaks comically broken English and is an idiot. He tries to help, but usually his ‘help’ is the kiss of death, because he’s just not quick enough on the uptake. 

The basic setup of “Cabin Pressure” is in many ways not unlike the basic situation of “Fawlty Towers”:

* entire cast engaged in running a low-budget marginal business which provides a fairly lousy customer experience and could go belly-up at any moment: check

* one protagonist who’s an incompetent berk who often acts like an asshole to people because he’s compensating for the fact that he has no real control over his life: check (Basil/Martin)

* one older woman who ruins everyone’s fun and is constantly busting the balls of the men who work under her: check (Sybil/Carolyn)

* one conventionally attractive and generally smarter and less dysfunctional subordinate whose cleverness is frequently called on to save the day: check (Polly/Douglas)

* one well-meaning idiot who mucks up everything he touches: check (Manuel/Arthur)

“Boston” is kind of a homage to the classic Fawlty Towers episode “The Kipper and the Corpse,” in which one of the guests dies while staying at Fawlty Towers and Basil et al. have to deal with the consequences that keep piling up. The guest’s name, Mr. Leeman, is borrowed by Finnemore for “Boston’s” soon to be dead passenger from hell, Mr. Leeman. In both episodes, Leeman’s death is the source of a lot of black humor which derives from the callousness with which the regular cast responds to his body and his death (”Kipper’s” Leeman’s body is carted all over the hotel and at one point put in a big wicker hamper; “Boston’s” Leeman is unceremoniously dumped in the galley, covered in foam; we don’t hear anyone attempt to speak to him, resuscitate him, or express sympathy for him until Arthur’s eulogy at the end of the episode). In each case, the dead man (or nearly-dead man) is treated, basically, as a problem and an inconvenience rather than a tragic loss of life.

Here’s the thing, though: “Kipper” is a classic “Fawlty Towers” episode partly because it plays to all the show’s strengths, including the fact that Basil is just a really nasty person. On the fan site I linked to above it is claimed that “Fawlty Towers” was inspired by an actual hotel the Monty Python team stayed in while filming, where the owner was a hostile lunatic who made everyone’s lives miserable. Cleese started this show with zero sympathy for his own character and unlike on many American sitcoms, where the asshole at the center eventually becomes a ‘lovable bastard’ (Archie Bunker, Homer Simpson, etc.), Basil never changed. One of the classic scenes in “Kipper” is of Basil coming into Leeman’s room in the morning to bring him breakfast in bed and delivering a whole monologue to him without realizing that he’s dead. Basil has so little compassion for or even interest in other people that he doesn’t even notice that Leeman isn’t moving or breathing. He does notice that Leeman’s not talking; but again, it’s all about him: “Unbelievable,” he mutters on his way down the stairs. “Not a single bloody word.” Sybil is also pretty nasty to Basil, though less so to other people. In general, the view of human nature informing “Fawlty Towers” is pretty dark, and that’s why “Kipper” is the episode people point to when they want to explain the essence du show.

As funny as “Boston” is, though, I think what Finnemore learns from it is that he doesn’t really want to write that kind of show. He’s more invested in the characters as people–real people with emotions and struggles and triumphs and defeats and whatnot–and his view of human nature is much more optimistic. His character, Arthur, is the anti-Basil–relentlessly cheerful, always seeing the good in people, ready to forgive anyone, usually free of self-torment or depression. And although he’s pretty dumb and pretty incompetent, Finnemore decides pretty early on to treat him very differently from the way FT treated Manuel. The rest of the team does bust on him from time to time, but it’s so much less mean-spirited than the what-an-idiot humor that follows Manuel around on FT. Arthur has his own fool’s wisdom, and if Douglas is always saving the day for the characters, more often than not Arthur is the one saving the day for the audience. And this is why the “Kipper and the Corpse” premise is not really a great fit for these characters. Carolyn’s callousness is sort of consistent with her early characterization, but pretty extreme even for her. Arthur’s eulogy is very in character; but one would expect Leeman’s heart attack and death to have emotional consequences for Arthur that they don’t have. Martin and Douglas’s interactions over whether to turn the plane around are in line with their “Abu Dhabi” characterization, but they will never again be given anything this high stakes to bicker over. (When the next most lethal thing happens, which is the bird strike in “St. Petersburg,” Martin and Douglas are on the same page and work together to resolve it.

So I see “Boston” as an important turning point because I think it’s where Finnemore decided not to go down the Fawlty Towers road any further. Which personally I think is really important to making the show as lovable as it is.


End file.
